Tag: Living Room

MiY 5b: Moving in Together

Big changes are happening with James, our fictional orange-loving research biologist. His girlfriend Eugenia has moved in with him! She’s so happy to be with a guy that has such good taste (and such orange furniture) because her previous boyfriend was “too busy revising his manuscript and thought her bourgeois affinity for decorating was capitalist and silly!”

I may or may not be basing this on my actual friend Eugenia who wants to live vicariously here.

OK, we know James had some pretty good furniture to start with. The mid-century rocker is staying since we’re basing each room around it in this edition of Making it Yours. We’re also keeping the sofa, orange pillow, pouf, lamp, and table. The molecule set is staying too, and we’re adding a vintage-style apple tree biology poster.* Eugenia and James painted the walls green, added some new curtains and a pillow, and put down a soft new rug to make the place feel like home for the two of them.

James and Eugenia will be moving the rocker into their bedroom soon, so when we check in on them again we’ll see how they’ve incorporated it.

* Did you know that apples don’t come true from seed? Apples are pretty interesting; read The Botany of Desire if you’re curious.

July 7, 2010
Pretty Toy Storage

Thank you for all of your cute basket suggestions! I went with plastic lace baskets for toy storage. I had completely forgotten about them, but they were all over the design blogs when they first came out as the Carrie bike baskets. Victoria uses one for file storage, Joy has one for scraps in her studio, and now I can tell you that they also make excellent little toy bins.

p.s. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my vintage side tables? They’re the best. They hold remotes in the drawers, magazines and the new toy baskets underneath, and they have ample surface space up top. And they were only $10 each.

December 19, 2009
The Nailhead Linen Curtains Are Up

I’ve put the nailhead curtains up in the living room. The color is perfect with the couch, but it may be a little too perfect (bordering on matchy-matchy). And I actually miss the zip of the yellow curtains! It looks like Brandon may have been right after all. What do you think?

December 1, 2009
Nailhead Curtains

I first wrote about these nailhead curtains back in July of last year. I wanted them but I hesitated and they were gone. I noticed that west elm is carrying them again though, so with the help of a few gift cards I went ahead and bought a pair of panels for the living room.

I’m still not sure how they’ll look with the color of the couch, but we’ll see. This is like a shopping second chance and I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t at least try them!

November 6, 2009
Pink Moroccan Pouf

Ahhhh. I’m loving my new pouf. It is SO nice to be able to prop my feet up, AND it looks cute in the room.

I ordered my Moroccan Pouf from John Derian, but honestly I should have probably gone with the less expensive pouf from Tazi. I was fixated on the more expensive one, mostly because of this photo from Domino. I felt like I knew what to expect and I didn’t know if the other would look the same… though it probably would have. So I do feel a bit foolish now for spending so much on a footrest, but oh well. I do like it quite a bit.

March 17, 2009
Living Room, Preparing for Baby

As promised, I’ve taken some better shots of the living room as it looks these days. Here’s a panoramic I put together from three photos:

The baby stuff is slowly starting to show up in the house now… We have a wicker bassinet in our bedroom (a family heirloom on Brandon’s side), a Jenny Lind cradle in the living room (that my little brother and sister slept in), the new Eames rocker, and a few other big items. I can already tell it’s going to be a challenge to keep my house from being taken over by primary colors and plastic!

I was a little worried that the rocker would look funny being in such close proximity to our IKEA Eames/Nelson derivative at Brandon’s desk, but it looks fine.

And the cradle, as big as it is in our small living room, looks fine too. I actually really like having an item in the room that definitively says “baby” — Brandon and I are so excited to meet her!

February 2, 2009